KEY POINTS:
Is this the last season of Gilmore Girls?
I don't know. It's such a funny time because to some degree, it's up to the actors and that makes all the people in charge very squirrely. It's this strange game of chicken where they have expressed that they
would like another year.
What's your gut feeling?
That we could finish it this year in a really classy, nice way, and you wouldn't feel like, "But I need to know another year's worth of what happens to those people". Next I'll be running for office.
How has life on set changed since [creator] Amy Sherman-Palladino left?
I think some of these writers work more like playwrights. They're very specific, and they want you to be, too. On a show like ours, where we talk so much, you're gonna make a mistake. If you say one wrong word, the rest of the take you're just like, "Oh, God, I'm gonna have to come back and do that again." But I'm also proud of how specific it is, and how it isn't like a lot of other television. Without her there, it is a freer set but the language is totally different. It's being written by a whole new group of people. It's not better or worse.
There's also a lot of fast dialogue in your new movie, Because I Said So. How does that compare to the show?
It's not my movie, you know. We just tried to be like a real family. When I'm other places, I don't think, "What would Lorelai Gilmore do in this situation?" I've done that job for a long time. I just know what the parameters are of that job. I can kind of click into that character now. I'm not, like, finding it. So to me, it requires a lot more focus to be believable in a whole new set of circumstances. And usually it's much quicker. In a TV show, you keep getting new pieces of information to add to the story. And in a movie, you have this kind of finite amount of material and time to kind of tell a story.
What was it like playing a psychiatrist?
There's a lot of psychologists in my family, strangely. That's one of those, like, tricky comedic things. Where you have a guy who's like, a nutjob guy.
Future plans?
Oh my God. I am so tired from these seven years, I can't even tell you. I did Evan Almighty, which is gonna be the hugest movie ever. But no pressure. I've never been in a big fancy movie like that where my trailer and Morgan Freeman's trailer were about the same ... And if it's the end of the show, I don't even know what I'll do with myself. I'm so used to a 12-hour day. What I would like to do next is have a stronger creative hand in what I would like to do. I would like to be a producer of the next thing I do.
Any trips coming up?
There's, like, 10. I really want to go to Ireland - I have family history there, although everybody keeps losing all the birth certificates, and nobody knows exactly where we're from. That's very my family. But I get, like, squirrely after three days in Hawaii. I'm like, "Well, now what do we do? I don't understand. What do you mean? Like, we just sit here more? There's more sitting?" I used to read all the time. Now I just fall asleep.
What can we expect from the last season?
We all die in a huge car crash? I don't know. Somebody bumps his head? I don't know. I don't think they know yet. Nobody's saying because no one knows if this is the end.
Lowdown
What: Gilmore Girls
Where and when: 5.30pm, Sunday, TV 2
